I recently came across the expression “to practise resurrection”. Not in the sense, presumably, of the film Flatliners, a 1990 film (remade unsuccessfully in 2017) in which Julia Roberts, Kiefer Sutherland and Kevin Bacon attempt to artificially create near-death experiences.

The suggestion I was reading about is that since we know we will be resurrected with Christ, we should endeavour to bring as much of that experience from the future into the present, rather in the same sense that the Kingdom of God is here and now and not just future.

So how do we practice resurrection? We could start with Paul’s remarkable comment in Galatians 2:20:

I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God…

So if I take Paul at his word, I’m already dead. The life of Christ is being lived out through me. How this works in practice is further expanded in Colossians chapter 3, which tells us we have been ‘raised with Christ’ and gives lists of the attitudes and behaviours we should intentionally adopt, or avoid.

Dead people have no possessions, no hopes and dreams, and no desires. If I am truly dead, I too will have laid all those things aside and kept only what Christ has given back to me. As many mission workers through the centuries have discovered, abandonment to Christ alone sets us free from the shackles of our own ambitions, wants and property.

Dead people also are invulnerable to temptation. The flesh has no control over them. Shortness of temper, gossip, gluttony and lust have no power over them. If I am truly like the dead, I will master the many temptations to sin that come my way daily.

It is not as easy to be a living sacrifice as a dead one. While my death with Christ may be metaphorically true, my ego still lives on in this body he has chosen to live his life in. And that is actually good, because we are not called to be zombies for Jesus, reanimated bodies with no life of their own. For the time being we are in symbiosis, as I pointed out last month. The object of the Christian life is not, like a Buddhist, to annihilate the self so that it gets consumed by the divine, but to attune myself so to the divine that we can operate as one without extinguishing my identity.

So we live on in the flesh, daily practising what it means to die to self and live in Christ. How does that impact on our leadership style, as we learn to lead humbly and accountably? How does it impact on our followership as we learn to set aside our own pride and ambition? And how does it affect our daily witness as we live out our love for our brothers and sisters while working in a multi-cultural team?

As we lay aside our old way of doing things and put on the new way (Colossians 3:9-10), we bring some of the future Kingdom of Heaven into the present. Maybe we’re trying to create a near-death experience after all?

The astute among you will have noticed that I have been following the October readings in the Northumbria Community’s Celtic Daily Prayer, which is a valuable resource for those of us wishing to cultivate a devotional life drawing on ancient traditions.

The readings have been quotes from the influential 20th century poet and mystic Evelyn Underhill. In one passage, she writes about what today we would call resilience:

If we desire a simple test of the quality of our spiritual life, a consideration of the tranquillity, gentleness and strength with which we deal with the circumstances of our outward life will serve us better than anything that is based on the loftiness of our religious notions, or fervour of our religious feelings…. This is the threefold imprint of the Spirit on the soul surrendered to God.

Resilience is a characteristic much-prized in mission workers, but one that is hard gained. Much member care is focussed on supporting people through trials and tribulations so that they grow more resilient with each test and are able to grow.

Yet resilience is not acquired through Biblical knowledge or professional skills, which are often the properties which commend themselves initially to church and agency as they mobilise and send us. Resilience is acquired through prayerfulness, time spend in the presence of God despite the demands of family, church, ministry and community. It comes from choosing, like Mary, to sit at the feet of Jesus when we know there is work to be done.

I discovered this resilience in my own life many years ago when I was struggling with long-term sickness, living on state benefits and finding it hard to live a ‘normal’ life. Yet at the same time I experienced an inner joy and lightness of spirit that was in complete contrast to the circumstances surrounding me. I concluded that what helped me was a heavenly perspective: God still loved me; Christ had still died for me; my place in heaven was secure – so what if the rest of this life is misery, sickness and squalor?

Yet many mission workers, far from experiencing such joy, are mired in what Mrs Underhill calls “the inequalities of family life, emotional and professional disappointments, the sudden intervention of bad fortune or bad health, and the rising and falling of our religious temperature.”

If your experience is more like that, it’s time to stop, take a holiday or go on retreat, before your stress levels lead you into burnout. It’s time to lay down some responsibilities and make time to sit and hold hands with God. As a result, we don’t necessarily get on top of the material circumstances of our lives, but we can transcend them.

I was recently asked by a single person planning to go to the mission field for support in preparing for the challenges a single in mission will face. What a wise thing for someone to do! But for me it raises a further question: how do we provide Syzygy’s training to a wider audience? We have already developed workshops, lectures and retreats on the subject, but these are not always accessible to everyone. We have blogged about singles on numerous occasions but these don’t contain all our material because we have many non-single readers!

Yet it remains clear that singles, whether new to the world of mission or long established, can benefit from specific help and advice on how to be successfully single. At the same time it appears that some sending agencies and few churches are not in a position to provide this. So I am wondering how to bring our experience to a wider audience. The options include another book/e-book, podcasts, webinars or a workbook. And we’d like some feedback to help us work out which is best. These of course are not only for single mission workers – we would also include material to help churches, agencies and married people understand how to help singles thrive.

So we’re inviting our readers to take part in a very brief survey to help us get a feel for what would work best. Just click hereto take part. It will only take a couple of minutes.

And do please share or retweet a link to this page so that as many people as possible get the opportunity to express their opinion!

As Syzygy takes a much-needed holiday this week, today we are going to pause and think about the value of stopping and reflecting. Many times we have blogged about the value of retreat, and while we recognise that this can imply a time of solitude and silence which would be torture for some of our more extroverted readers, all of us can find value in withdrawing regularly from the busyness of life’s challenges and burdens to reflect on life and ministry.

Occasionally we may hear about people who have been on sabbatical, or maybe we have even met some of them, and wonder why we don’t seem to be able to get so much as a week off let alone a few months!

Sabbatical draws its principle from the Sabbath, the seventh day, and keeping the Sabbath rest is something that has marked Israel out from its neighbours over the millennia, and is also a custom the church followed until fairly recently. Less famously the Old Testament law included a Sabbatical year – a year in which fields, fruit trees and vines were left unsown and unharvested every seventh year to allow them to rest. And perhaps more importantly, to allow the people to trust that God would provide sufficient harvest for them in the sixth year to last them until the eighth year’s harvest came in. Sadly there is little evidence that this act of faith and obedience was ever fully-implemented in ancient Israel, although the idea has continued to hold sway in ministry.

Not that we necessarily get – or even need – a whole year off every seventh year. But to be free of ministry responsibilities for a significant amount of time once in a while is valuable in a way that short bursts of holiday or even the less-structured but nevertheless demanding time of home assignment can never be.

However much time we manage to set aside, there is value in stepping out of our daily routine to reflect. Without doing so, we can get so stuck in the treadmill we don’t have time to think. If we can break that cycle and get away, we can ask ourselves serious questions like:

Are we still true to our original calling?

What are we doing that is outside the will of God?

What work can we drop/delegate to someone else?

Is there a better way of achieving our goals?

What new things is God calling us to?

What else does God want to say to us or do in our lives?

Perhaps, if we took more time out to reflect, there would be fewer issues of missionary burnout.

(Syzygy Trustees please note I have now been in my current post for 8 years!)

I have written in this blog many times about the need for mission workers to be actively supported by their church, agency, family and friends – all of whom are very important for the resilience and fruitfulness of the mission worker.

However, the provision of intentional, pre-emptive, supportive care does not absolve mission workers from caring for themselves! With millennials in the mission field, who are accustomed to more attentive parenting, workplace nurturing and personal mentoring, there may be an expectation of higher standards of support than were previously considered appropriate. We need to lovingly remind mission workers that they are not children, they have been selected for their ability to thrive in the mission field, and have been trained to withstand the challenges of life in demanding places.

We must therefore resist the attempt to treat them as fragile, wrap them in cotton wool and run around looking after them. Instead we need to encourage them into self-care. This covers every aspect of who they are:

Physical self-care – They need to be paying attention to how their diet, exercise and sleep are healthily maintained to keep them well. They need to be aware of their own biological cycle, how they adapt in their body to changing months and seasons, the amount of heat and daylight available to them, and how they plan their life around their natural strengths. At what time of day are they at their best, and can they adapt their working time around that? Taking the full holiday entitlement, Sabbath days and weekends (where possible) will be part of this.

Mental self-care – maintaining mental well-being has two aspects to it: allowing the mind to unwind from stress, and stretching it to enable it to cope with more. So regular academic study, distance learning on practical or theological issues to keep people’s skills up to speed is important. As is the need to create downtime to give the brain a chance to switch off, particularly at night to allow more chance of good sleep. Developing a physical hobby, perhaps a craft or a sport, will go a long way towards facilitating this.

Spiritual self-care – mission workers are selected for their ability to feed themselves from the Bible and thrive in hard places, but regular times of retreat, seeing a spiritual director and being helped through podcasts or discussion groups can contribute to their spiritual well-being. So too can keeping regular hours of prayer, journaling, or using a personal liturgy to help with prayer.

Emotional self-care – often we find ourselves too busy to stop and reflect on how well we are relating to those around us: family, friends, church and co-workers. How do we intentionally deepen our accountable relationships? How do we live in ongoing repentance and stronger commitment to others? This can be complicated by being in cross-cultural teams, churches or families – can we identify the facets of the culture we live in which cause us the most stress, and find ways of coping better, even to the point of thriving in them?

In considering all these different things they need to do to care for themselves, mission workers may want to consider inviting a friend to be an accountability partner, to ask searching questions about what they are doing to look after themselves. Some people may feel that the idea of looking after oneself does not fit well with ‘laying down one’s life’, but like a good marathon runner, we are in this race to finish well, and in order to do that we need to pace ourselves rather than run the race like a sprint!

Recently, while on retreat, I came across a rocky headland where a wide variety of plants was struggling with grim determination to grow. Grass, heather and trees all struggled to thrive in the rocky soil. Not in their natural environment, deprived of good soil, they were undernourished, stunted and vulnerable. Not unlike a few mission workers I know!

Mission takes nearly all of us out of our normal environment. It also takes us to a context where we may find it hard to thrive. Sometimes we are isolated (emotionally, spiritually, culturally, physically) with little encouragement, fellowship or input. This is why Syzygy started publishing devotional blogs, so that we can help to provide a little input into the lives of isolated mission workers.

If the plants I mentioned above were in my care, I might consider moving them to a new location where they are more suited to the growing conditions. While some of us may be aware that we are called to endure in tough places, others may be wondering if we’ve made the right choice. And there’s no shame in relocating to a place where we can thrive better if we feel that’s the right choice before God. After all, if our life is more shrivelled up and stunted than it is abundant (John 10:10) it would be good for us to reflect on how positive our Christian witness is likely to be.

Alternatively I might try to change the growing conditions of the plants I were caring for. I’m a great believer in manure and (although we might joke that most of our agencies are good at giving us that) like plants we need to make sure that we get sufficient nutrition to thrive. Eating well is obviously an important part of staying healthy, but we also need to make sure that emotionally and spiritually we are taking in more than we give out. Where are the supportive relationships we need? Is social media sufficient, or do we need to arrange for more team members to join us in our location? Are we able to sustain ourselves from our own private Bible study or do we need to access podcasts, books and commentaries? Do we need to schedule more time away from the mission field in order to recharge our batteries effectively, or make plans for more retreat?

When looking at struggling plants on that rocky headland, while having sympathy for their challenge, I also felt huge admiration for their tenacity. Being plants they obviously had no means of simply moving to a location more conducive for growth, so they just stubbornly got on with it. Like many of the mission workers I know. Like it says in Matthew, those who hang on by the skin of their teeth will be saved (Matthew 24:13). If you’re in that situation, we salute your tenacity. Keep on keeping on!

Change, it has been observed, is the only constant. And that was pointed out 2500 years ago by a Greek philosopher.

Many of us in mission struggle to keep up with various aspects of change, whether it’s organisational structure, new technology, government regulations or the constant coming and going of co-workers.

Most of us are not particularly disposed towards change, and the accelerating rate of change seems ever more bewildering. So how can we learn to survive in a world where change is guaranteed, to continue apace? Here are our top tips:

Accept that things change – for better and for worse. Change is normal! Our first experience of coming into this world was through change, and we continue to change throughout life until the final change in death.

Give yourself time to process the change – it takes time to get used to what is new and you won’t necessarily get the hang of it straight away.

Discuss it with family and friends. How can they help you and vice versa? Who is the person for whom the change is easy? How can they be a resource for the others?

Recognise the stress that change causes and take steps to manage it well.

Research ways of making this change go as smoothly as possible.

Stick to familiar routines that will provide some element of stability in the midst of the change.

Rest in God – who never changes.

Eat well, sleep well, exercise well. If you are physically healthy you will be better able to cope.

Are you afraid of the future? Give it back to God, in whose hands it is anyway.

Make a to-do list and tick items off to create a sense of control.

Understand how your personality type copes with change and focus on using your strengths to help you rather than lamenting your weaknesses.

Read the bits of the Bible which were written by people undergoing massive change. How did they deal with it?

Identify and name what you think you are losing. This helps you be able to say goodbye to it – even reluctantly!

Develop your hobbies to ensure you have a way of relaxing.

If there is change in one aspect of your life, try to ensure there is stability in other areas to reduce the pressure on you from the change.

Reflect on how you personally can benefit from the change and help others to do so.

Find a safety valve so that you can vent your negative feelings privately without causing harm to other people or agencies. Avoid expressing too much to close colleagues or on social media!

Take a retreat or holiday to recharge your emotional energy.

See the positives: is this a chance to grow? Could things be better for you or your team in the future?

Acknowledge the extent to which your resistance to change may be based on your bad experiences of change in the past.

Create a ‘monument’ so that you can respect and honour the achievements of the past as you press on towards the future.

The world of cross-cultural mission in the UK is in transition at the moment as churches and agencies all look at our practices and processes and try to find new ways of sending mission workers which will replace the outmoded model originally developed in the 19th century. This is given added urgency by the financial challenges many churches and agencies are experiencing.

In this climate, there is a severe risk that mission workers will suffer due to lack of member care. Small agencies are not able to devote sufficient resources to it. Larger agencies are looking to reduce central costs. Agencies are expecting churches to do more to support their mission workers, but the churches struggle to find the vision, capacity and expertise to deliver this competently.

Syzygy is uniquely placed to ensure mission workers continue to be effectively supported during this upheaval. We have already entered into arrangements with several sending agencies, both large and small, for us to provide member care for their workers. We also are able to support churches to develop the vision and capacity to do more to support their mission partners.

In order to provide this level of service we have been expanding our own capacity and have developed a network of member care professionals across the country who are conveniently located for the mission workers we hope to support. The Syzygy representatives are able to carry out one-to-one pre-departure training, ongoing member care for mission partners in the field, and home assignment debriefs.

Blogging can be a frustrating activity. I can spend days mulling over a good idea, hours finely crafting my prose, and finally release my most earth-shattering blog onto the internet, only to be met by the deafening sound of silence. No comments. No shares. Not even a like. Nothing. It’s deflating.

Just like that deflating feeling most mission workers know when asked by some innocent church member back home “How many people have you baptised this year?”. Most of us know the embarrassment of squirming a bit, thinking of some excuses (“that’s not really my role”) before reluctantly admitting the truth – none. And for many of us, it was none last year, or the year before.

Our sending churches seem to expect a vast harvest, or at least a regular crop, of souls for the Lord. When did mission become subject to arbitrary productivity statistics more fitting to a factory? And why are these standards not applied to those working on the home front?

The reality is that western mission workers seldom produce significant numbers of ‘converts’. We sow a lot of seed but seldom see the harvest, even though we continue to hope for a harvest. Unlike Isaiah, who was told by God at the start of his long ministry that he would see no fruit. We often hear sermons on the powerful call of Isaiah, his vision of the Lord in his temple, his enthusiastic response, but we seldom hear sermons on the passage which immediately follows:

Then the LORD told me to go and speak this message to the people:

You will listen and listen, but never understand.

You will look and look, but never see.

The LORD also said: Make these people stubborn!

Make them stop up their ears, cover their eyes, and fail to understand.

Don’t let them turn to me and be healed.

Would you have gone into the mission field if you’d known that was your mission? Small wonder that within minutes of his enthusiastic “Here I am, send me!”, Isaiah’s response was “How long do I have to do that?” No prophet wants people to ignore his message, as no mission worker wants her words to fall on deaf ears.

I am sure many of us can identify with this frustration. We have spent years, sometimes decades, working hard in the mission field, with little harvest to show for it. But we are not called to be successful. We are called to be faithful to him who sent us and to the work he has called us to do, and we are called to bear fruit in our lives. The obedient mission worker, persevering in adversity, has far more in common with Isaiah than with Jonah, who preached and an entire city repented immediately (Jonah 3:10), or the rare contemporary outbreaks of revival we hear about, but seldom experience in our own ministries.

So, if you have reaped little harvest, take courage. Jesus told his disciples “Others have laboured so that you can reap.” (John 4:38) Perhaps it is your role to plant the seed. In impacting the culture, demonstrating the gospel by your lifestyle, encouraging and equipping local believers, softening a harsh spiritual environment through your prayer, and being a faithful witness, you are planting an immense crop for others to reap. In many of the places we are called to, mission is a long-term, multi-generational enterprise. Like a worker on a production line, you may weld the chassis but never see the car roll out of the factory. But the car wouldn’t be any good without your humble and unlauded work.

You are probably no stranger to that moment when you hit a button on your computer and nothing happens. Perhaps a little icon rotates, or a dialogue box pops up that says “Processing…” And you just sit there, uncertain whether to press the button again, or go and make a cup of tea.

Often the reason is the processor is overloaded with demands. Perhaps it has to sort through a lot of junk to find the information it needs, or maybe you’re running several programs at once. Sometimes there is a huge automatic download in progress (it’s usually Windows). Whatever the reason, the demands on the system exceed its processing capacity.

It’s just the same with humans. We don’t like to think we have limited processing capacity, particularly in a world where multi-tasking is so valued, but for mission workers there are often a lot of things going on at the same time. Our heads are busy with the demands of operating in a foreign language, navigating traffic, managing family needs, planning for meetings, preparing sermons and liaising with co-workers.

Some of us are not equipped temperamentally to balance so many competing demands for our attention, and struggle to concentrate on any one of them because others keep surfacing at the same time. In such circumstances it’s good to have times when we allow ourselves to close the office door or switch the phone off so that we can minimise the demands on our attention.

There may also be a lot more going on behind the scenes than we are aware of. The pressure of living cross-culturally creates a lot of circumstances which we may think we are able to handle, but all add small amounts to the daily stress we suffer. Did that person misunderstand me because my language is limited? Did I fail to pick up subtle cues that I’m not used to? Why do I have to wait so long in this queue? Why do people drive like this? Often these uncertainties create ‘feedback loops’ – situations that we keep mulling over, whether consciously or not, that also demand part of our processing power.

In order to deal with these issues which keep running in the background, we need to have a look at the task manager to get a better grip of what’s going on. As we’ve remarked on previous occasions, regular retreat is an excellent way of doing this. Even if we can only manage a day away at a quiet or spiritual place to reflect, we can still ask ourselves questions like:

How am I coping in this culture?

What are the stress points for me?

What are the ongoing issues in my personal life, team relationships and engagement with the local community?

This then equips us with a bit more knowledge so that we know which thought processes we can shut down. We do that by reflecting on these issues and asking ourselves:

Why am I upset by this?

What can I do about it?

How is God equipping me to grow in this situation?

Many of these issues can be quickly dealt with once exposed. One practice that is helpful to get into is to do a mini-reflection each night before going to bed. We can ask ourselves simple questions like:

What upset me today?

Why?

Who do I need to forgive, or ask forgiveness from?

How do I resolve this?

But let’s not finish with the negatives! We can also finish the day by reminding ourselves what brought us joy, what we can be thankful for, and where we saw God at work in, through and around us.

Just like our computers, a little bit of regular maintenance will help us to operate a little more effectively.

Over the summer, I had a curious and (for me) unusual experience: I got lost. No, it wasn’t the occasion when I was on a mountain in low cloud, when I had compass, map and GPS and was able to navigate the terrain easily despite not being able to see the landmarks. It was on a lowish moor, under clear skies, when I could see the nearby lake and the town beside it. But the path had disappeared.

Soon I found myself wading through bog, scrambling up rocks, pushing through heather, and fording streams to try to get to my destination. Yet the whole time I knew where I was, but couldn’t find the way to where I wanted to be.

I felt on later reflection that the entire situation was symbolic of what we have been discussing in the last two blogs: it is possible to know exactly where you are, while being equally unsure whether you ought to be there. Lost and not lost. Which raises an interesting question: is it possible to be lost with God?

If we are walking with God, doing our best daily to put our hand in his hand, our feet where his feet have trod, to listen to his voice and follow the sound, can we ever really be lost? Even in the midst of transition, when all we know is that we’re leaving one place and moving to another, possibly completely unknown, we cannot be truly lost. God knows where we are, which direction we are facing and where we are going.

Which are all things we may be uncertain of. Yet in our confusion and doubt we must trust the shepherd, whose gentle voice we have come to know, and even if we have no idea where we are, trust that he knows. He is quite capable of turning us around, moving us in a different direction, or rescuing us should we really need it. Just as Thomas Merton wrote:

One of the (many) challenges single mission workers face is finding resources to help them in their challenge to live a rich and fulfilled life without a life partner. Sometimes their perception of a huge hole in their life where their life-partner should be can become so overwhelming that it dominates every aspect of their life, and often there is little in the way of resources to help them refocus their attention on the amazing possibilities and opportunities of being single.

Now Syzygy has partnered with Member Care Media to produce a series of 5 short podcasts which include some essential teaching for single mission workers. We hope that these introductions to material shared more fully in our regular retreats for singles at Penhurst Retreat Centre will help single mission workers thrive in their singleness and learn to see it as a blessing rather than a challenge to be overcome, or even better, ended.

The podcasts can be found on the singles page of Member Care Media, and the subject matter includes:

An introduction to singleness and why it is a challenge for so many mission workers

Biblical characters who were successfully single

A Biblical perspective on why singleness isn’t intrinsically bad

Unpacking the ‘gift’ of singleness

Strategies for a fulfilling single life

It is our hope that these resources will be used by single mission workers worldwide, to help them get the most out of their singleness.

Another resource we produced a couple of years ago is the book Single Mission, which we believe is the first book by single mission workers about single mission workers for single mission workers. Many agencies have used it as part of their training and orientation – and not only for their singles! It has been greatly appreciated by married people too, who have used it to learn about the challenges of being single later in life which they may not have experienced. Why not try it out?

Mo Farah is not a Christian, yet in Rio on Saturday night he demonstrated something that we all could learn a lesson from – he got up again and carried on.

We all know what it is to fall. We make mistakes ourselves, or like Mo, we get innocently tripped up by life. Sometimes somebody deliberately trips us up. But however it happens, we find ourselves on the floor.

Dazed, confused, hurt, our instinct can be to give up, thinking it’s all over. Maybe we lash out, to try to regain some pride by implicating others, or look around for sympathy to make us feel better.

But Mo showed us what the Christian’s discipline should teach us: don’t mess around, just get up and start running again. In a 100m race that would not be possible. But in a distance race, there is time to make up lost ground. And the Christian life is a marathon, not a sprint.

The Bible is full of people who fell. In a temper, Moses killed a man. Out of fear, Peter denied he even knew Jesus. Abraham, the man of faith, took events into his own hands rather than trusting in God. But that isn’t what they’re remembered for, because they didn’t let failure become the final word. They carried on. There are many others who tripped up, but finished well. Falling isn’t final. It has been rightly observed:

A slightly loose rendering of Psalm 23 sounds positively idyllic. It’s something that we all long for, that place of peace and rest where we can truly relax and recharge our batteries. Whether it’s a tropical beach, a snow-covered mountain or a green meadow, we know we need it.

So why is this sheep’s experience of God so different to ours? Most of us have lives and ministries full of arguments, crises, funding gaps, regulatory demands and enough stress and turmoil to make a postcard on the fridge door the closest we get to experiencing the soul-restoring work of the Good Shepherd in our lives. Has he led us on the wrong path? Where did it all go so wrong? While we may long for the pleasant experience of the green pasture, the truth is so very different. Or is it?

The ‘sheep’ writing this Psalm also had times of terrifying darkness. He knew that there were enemies out there trying to get him. Life is difficult, dangerous and short for a sheep on its own. In those challenging times we need to stay close to the protection and provision of the shepherd. We need to trust that no matter how bleak things look, there always remains the possibility of the green pasture. The Shepherd doesn’t banish the danger and threats, but protects us in the midst of it.

What does that mean to us in practical terms, as we battle through the Cairo traffic, face up to the threat of insurgents or try desperately to meet the needs of our church from our limited resources? We do ministry in places where it seems peace is impossible to find, yet we know that without it we face the risk of burnout and having to leave the field. How can we maintain our resilience?

We need to learn to take little pieces of the green pasture experience with us into the darkness. One example is to pause for regular times of prayer. As I am writing this the alarm on my phone struck 9.00, so I stopped work and went to a peaceful place to pray, just for a few minutes. I bring the peace back with me into the workplace. Another example is that I often find myself driving through a post-industrial area of my city which as scarred by derelict warehouses, railway viaducts and graffiti. I could choose to see it as soul-destroying, but instead I look out for the poppies that bloom defiantly in the wasteland, and allow my soul to be refreshed.

True soul-refreshment is found not only in getting away from the stress and burden of everyday life, but also by intentionally bringing peace into it.

I am going to end this series of blogs on resilience with something very unusual in five years of blogging – a personal testimony. Late in 1999 I returned to England in a badly damaged condition after five years of mission service in Africa. During the previous decade I had suffered overwork and stress, emotional and spiritual abuse, unresolved grief, and frequent illnesses culminating in hepatitis. And now I had chronic fatigue syndrome! Unable to care for myself, I moved in with a friend who took care of me as I slowly recovered.

During this time a strange thing happened: I became filled with joy in a way that was completely new to me. I would spontaneously burst into songs of praise even when walking down the street or in the shower. My prayer life became characterised by gratitude. I was puzzled that this was at odds with my material state: poor health, no money, no hope of getting a job, the frustration of long-term illness.

And then I realised the essential truth that my spirit was rejoicing in even though my mind was slow to catch up. Everything really important in life was already taken care of! God loved me unconditionally. Christ died for me. My eternal salvation was secure. So what if the rest of my mortal life was illness and poverty?

This is the eternal perspective that Paul was able to tap into when enduring his “momentary, light afflictions” (2 Corinthians 4:17). This is what happens when we have roots that run deep into God so that we can survive the tough times.

It was five years before I was restored to health, and the lessons I learned during that time have been life-transforming. They enable me to thrive because my essence is focussed on my being, not my doing, and is rooted in God’s acceptance of me in Christ. They help me even at times of extreme busyness to live as a Mary, not a Martha. They also provide the experience which now equips me to help others find peace in the midst of their busy and stressful lives.

I pray for each of you reading this blog, that you will also know the sense of heavenly trajectory and peace that comes from having deep roots. If you don’t, please contact us on info@syzygy.org.uk for a confidential discussion.

In this series on resilience, we have made the point that resilience is essential for our survival as mission workers. We need to develop it before we go, sustain it when the going gets tough, and restore it when things get easier. Today we’re going to look at some resources to help with this, several of which we have already referred to in other blogs because they’re so good, but it does no harm to bring them together in one place.

Books

The best single resource we have come across on this subject is a small booklet called Spirituality for the long-haul, by Tony Horsfall. It is a simple, practical and accessible way of making sure you have everything you need in place, and you can buy it online from Kitabfor just £3. Tony is also the author of Working from a Place of Rest, which helps us combat overwork. Gene Edwards’ A Tale of Three Kings and Marjory Foyle’s Honourably Wounded are both classics in helping people wounded by their own leaders and colleagues. And Laura Mae Gardner’s Healthy, Resilient & Effectiveis a great handbook for leaders of agencies and churches in helping develop resilience in their mission partners.

Online resources

There is now a vast number of websites dedicated to supporting mission workers, and out of them all you might like to look first at Member Care Media with its vast array of podcasts on a variety of topics. The Headington Institute has a variety of fascinating articles about self-awareness, stress and resilience.

Retreat

We frequently talk about the importance of retreat to restore our inner peace and create a space to reconnect with God. While there are many places across the world providing retreat for mission workers (see our retreats page) we particularly recommend Penhurst Retreat Centre in East Sussex for its cosy, informal atmosphere, effective debriefing and focus on mission workers. Those of you in extreme stages of burnout or trauma may find a visit to Le Rucher helpful, and of course there are similar resources in other continents.

When trees are planted close together, they often don’t waste energy growing outwards into the familiar bushy shape we know of a mature solitary oak. This is exemplified in plantations, where they are deliberately placed close together so that they will quickly grow tall and straight to provide good timber. Think pine or gum tree plantations.

The proximity of the trees to each other encourages them all to grow upwards, towards the only source of light. This too should be our goal in life – to grow ‘up’ towards God.

Many of us involved in mission lose sight of this in our enthusiasm to reach out to those who do not yet know Jesus. We organise campaigns, strategies and church plants and in our busyness of keeping the whole thing on the road we somehow forget the real goal of life. David Pawson once said something like “God doesn’t need servants – he’s got plenty of angels. But he is looking for a bride for his son.” That does not mean that there is no need for service in the Christian life. That’s the partnership that results from a growing relationship with God and leads to an ever-deepening intimacy as we see God at work in us and through us.

Last week we considered the proximity of others a source of protection for us, but it should also be a source of spiritual stimulation. If our teams, churches or supporters are not inspiring us to grow towards God, we should be challenging them to. We are called to be part of a worshipping community, and even though some of us are pioneer workers who are physically separated from others, we still need the encouragement and inspiration of those who support us. We need to consciously develop deeper relationships in which it is natural to talk about God, what he has done in our lives and written in his word, so that we help one another to grow.

While our mission may be to reach out, our calling is to reach up. As Alexreminded us a few weeks ago, we should be fixing our eyes on Jesus (Hebrews 12:2). Paul exhorts us to press on towards the upward goal (Philippians 3:14). Maintaining our heavenly perspective enables us to endure the many hardships which we undergo in the course of our mission. Knowing that we suffer for Christ helps us to endure. Understanding that there is glory on the other side of this life frees us from working for glory now… or it should do.

Yet many of us are far more like Martha than Mary (Luke 10:28-42). We rush around doing stuff for Jesus in preference to being with him. For some of us, ministry may even be therapy rather than worship – striving to find identity, meaning and purpose in what we do rather than Who we are doing it with. Mary, on the other hand, contentedly sat at the feet of Jesus listening to what he has to say. I wonder how many of us choose the better part? Or are we simply too busy?

Have you noticed that mission workers are often expected to be spiritually self-sufficient, able to sustain themselves by feeding on God’s word alone, with little or no access to relevant church or fellowship groups? Curiously, the people who assert this are often those who tell Christians that they cannot survive spiritually without regularly attending church meetings, Bible studies, home groups…. Why are mission workers expected to be so different?

The truth is that most of us are not different. We struggle to maintain our spiritual vitality without friends around us. Our spiritual disciplines can fail under the pressure of demands on us. We can become discouraged when we labour long in the mission field with apparently little result. We dry up inside, and our relationship with God can be little more than going through the motions.

So how can we, as mission workers, put down deep roots into the dry and dusty spiritual soil in which we’re planted? Often there is no easy answer – Psalm 1 might seem like a good place to start but who wants to Bible study night and day?

For most of us, it’s simply a case of hanging on and not giving up. And that’s ok. Because trees don’t put down deep roots when the drought comes. That’s the time to pause and wait. Deep roots are not developed during the hard times but in the good ones. When things are easier, perhaps we’re on home assignment, or a retreat, or at a conference, we can experience times of refreshing to see us through the dry periods.

This is such an important part of our early spiritual life, our training in church and Bible College, and our pre-departure preparation: building up spiritual stamina through regular Bible study, prayer and worship. These become habits that sustain us through the times of challenge.

But what do we do if we’re already in the middle of the drought and we didn’t take the time to develop deep roots before? How do we survive when it feels like we’re all dried up inside? That’s when we need someone to help water us! Make plans for a retreat or a conference. Invite someone to visit who can refresh you. Try a new church or a new version of the Bible that will bring things alive in a new way. Download some sermons or visit a cyberchurch. Hold a skype prayer meeting with friends once a week.

If you’ve tried all of these and you’re not getting anywhere, it’s time to re-evaluate your position – are you being effective if you’re that dry? How can you be a witness to the good news if it’s clearly not good news in your life? Many of us are frightened of withdrawing from the mission field in case we’re seen as a failure, but what army doesn’t execute a strategic withdrawal when it realises it’s in an unsustainable position? It is better to leave the mission field than to lose your faith, which is what can happen if we just hang on grimly getting drier and drier without meeting God in the midst of our drought.

We all know the idea of safety in numbers, whether it’s herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the Serengeti, or shoals of mackerel avoiding predators like tuna. But we might not have noticed that trees do the same. A few tree species produce winged seeds that catch the wind and fly far away, but most, like the oak, produce heavy ones that don’t fall far from the parent tree, so that they can build up a forest around them for protection.

Whether it’s a naturally-occurring forest or a human-made plantation, trees tend to flourish in groups. This can be best seen in some of the Victorian plantations that still stand on the top of some of Britain’s hills. Trees seldom grow alone on the top of exposed hills, and if they do, they don’t always grow big and strong. The wind breaks off their tender new growth resulting in squat, bent trees. This still happens on the windward side of hilltop woods. The ones that bear the brunt of the wind still struggle, but in doing so, they provide shelter for the downwind ones. The further away the trees are from the force of the wind, the taller and straighter they grow. In other words, the upwind ones take a hit for the others.

Mission workers are too often like lone trees struggling against the elements. They leave the safety of their natural environment to go somewhere more demanding. They might persist but they don’t thrive. Which raises the obvious question – where is the community? Who is taking the hit for you so that you can grow big and strong?

It doesn’t have to be one supporter who suffers greatly bearing this burden, but a number who share it between them. Part of raising support before we go is finding the members of this team who not only provide the money (and that’s what we focus on getting, right?) but can provide practical and pastoral support, communication and prayer.

It’s also about being part of a team in the field which supports us in our challenges. Whether they are specialist member care workers, supportive colleagues or understanding team leaders, we need to make sure that we have a team which takes the hit for us (and vice versa). We must also remember not to overlook the provision that God has given us in the local believers. Too often we come to the mission field with a mentality of serving the local church which is at best paternalistic if not neo-colonialist, and we don’t even entertain the fact that they might be able to serve and encourage us. But perhaps we serve them best when we show that we are not strong and invincible but fragile and vulnerable and allow them to help us in our need.

Few of us are called to be a lonely pine on a hilltop. Most of us are intended to be mighty oaks of righteousness, planted together in groups which will bless and encourage others. So take a look around and see where the other trees are, and whether you can’t actually start growing closer together.

Last week I introduced our series on resilience by quoting Paul’s attitude to his “momentary, light afflictions” (2 Corinthians 4:17). As I pointed out, these included arbitrary arrest, attempted lynching and transport accidents. Things which would drive most mission workers to head for home on the first flight, if they hadn’t already been recalled by their HR departments. So how come Paul was not perturbed by these challenges? How could he be stoned and left for dead one day, and the next day go to the neighbouring town and carry on preaching the gospel (Acts 14:19-21)?

Paul had deep roots. He was utterly convinced of God’s love for him despite such trials (Romans 8:38-39). He was completely persuaded of the need for humanity to hear the gospel (1 Corinthians 9:16), and death held no fear for him because he knew what would happen to him after he died (Philippians 1:20-24). This enabled him to keep his suffering in perspective – it was nothing compare to what Christ had suffered for him.

How do we develop these deep roots? To use a sapling as an analogy, trees develop deep roots by going through hardship in the first place. We know that we need to stake a young tree to stop it blowing over in the first place, but what most of us do not know is that if we stake it too tightly, it is stable and will not develop deep roots. Only if it’s allowed to wave in the wind will its roots go deeper into the ground to provide more stability. The more it shakes, the further the roots will go seeking rocks to hang onto. For us, those rocks are God, and the great truths of our salvation. When the storm strikes, our response should not be to doubt our calling, or to wonder why God did not help us when we needed him. It should be to confess our trust in him despite our outward circumstances, as many of the psalms do.

In the psalms we read the thoughts of people going through great trials. David on the run from a man trying to kill him (Psalm 7), or people taken into exile to a country where they find it hard to worship (Psalm 137). Yet in many of the psalms which honestly cry out “Where are you God?” there are also great statements of faith and trust, such as in Psalm 13:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?

…but I have trusted in your love and my heart will rejoice in your salvation.

Even the 23rd psalm, a great favourite of many who suffer, acknowledges the existence of the valley of the shadow of death, something to be afraid of, and enemies close at hand, at the same time as trusting in the comforting presence of the shepherd. Indeed, if all were well, the sheep would not need the shepherd – it’s the very presence of danger and hardship that reminds the sheep of her vulnerability and makes her stay close to the shepherd.

This is why the psalms are a comfort for so many going through hardships – they do not ignore the tragedies and injustices of life, and confess God’s glory and faithfulness as a way to make sense of suffering. In doing so, the psalmist reorientates himself back to trusting in God as he reconciles his belief in God with his difficult circumstance, either by confessing faith in the midst of adversity or by turning his accusation into a prayer for deliverance. Having done this, he puts down deeper roots, finding greater stability and life-giving nutrients which will sustain him when the next disaster strikes:

He will be like a deep-rooted tree growing by a river:

It bears fruit in season and its leaves do not wither when there is drought.

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